A new five-year, $1.27 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) will help transform the study of quantitative- and data-intensive biosciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

The grant will create the Integrative and Quantitative Biosciences Accelerated Training Environment (InQuBATE) Predoctoral Training Program at Georgia Tech. InQuBATE is designed to train a new generation of biomedical researchers and thought leaders to harness the data revolution.

“We want to improve and enhance the training of students to focus on biological questions while leveraging modern tools, and in some cases developing new tools, to address foundational challenges at scales from molecules to systems,” said Joshua Weitz, professor and Tom and Marie Patton Chair in the School of Biological Sciences. Weitz is co-leading the program with Peng Qiu, associate professor in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University.

Biology is undergoing a transformation, according to Weitz and Qiu, requiring a new educational paradigm that integrates quantitative approaches like computational modeling and data analytics into the experimental study of living systems.

“Our intention is to develop a training environment that instills a quantitative, data-driven mindset, integrating quantitative and data science methods into all aspects of the life science training pipeline,” added Weitz, founding director of Tech’s Interdisciplinary Graduate Program in Quantitative Biosciences (QBioS).

The roots of InQuBATE go back to the fall of 2016, shortly after QBioS was launched. Weitz saw an opportunity to augment what he was teaching in his cornerstone course, Foundations of Quantitative Biosciences, in which students model living systems from the molecular level up through cells, organisms, populations, and ecosystems. In doing so, students “got a brief introduction to implementing high-dimensional data analytics, visual analytics, clustering, and modern machine learning methods. But we couldn’t cover allthose topics in detail,” Weitz said.

So, he reached out to Qiu, who was teaching data analytic methods in his Machine Learning in Biosciences course: “Instead of us developing that class, we started strongly encouraging QBioS students to take Peng’s class,” Weitz said.

“For me, this was a great opportunity to work with students from the biology side who had real interests in learning data mining and machine learning, as well as students from the engineering side,” said Qiu, principal investigator in the Machine Learning and Bioinformatics Lab in Coulter BME. “We could see that it was a great learning environment and the QBioS students really excelled in the class. That gave us confidence. Now we’re building this [InQuBATE] training program, and hope it will foster even greater cross pollination.”

The training program is designed to do exactly that, bringing together students and faculty from three Georgia Tech colleges: computing, engineering, and sciences. That combination of expertise is reflected in the leadership team. In addition to principal investigators Weitz (College of Sciences) and Qiu (College of Engineering), the faculty leadership team includes Elizabeth Cherry (School of Computational Science and Engineering, College of Computing), Eva Dyer (Coulter BME, College of Engineering and Emory School of Medicine), and Marvin Whiteley (School of Biological Sciences, College of Sciences).

The InQuBATE program will ultimately support 15 Ph.D. students over five years. The first cohort — prioritizing second-year Ph.D. students — will be selected in August. Next spring, the program will begin soliciting applications from first-year Ph.D. students.

“The program will extend the breadth of student training without adding time to the Ph.D.,” Weitz said. “For students on the engineering or computing side, InQuBATE will augment their living systems research experience. For students on the living systems side, the program will augment their training in modeling and data analytics.”

Weitz, Qiu, and their collaborators also are developing a series of semester-long and short-form (a week or less) courses that will be available to other graduate students, in addition to the InQuBATE cohorts.

“We intend to make programmatic offerings available to a broader community,” Weitz said. “In the long term, we hope InQuBATE takes on a central role in shaping the culture of integrative approaches in the study of living systems at Georgia Tech.”

Jennifer Leavey and Carrie Shepler have accepted appointments as assistant deans in the College of Sciences Dean’s Office at the Georgia Institute of Technology effective July 1, 2021.

Leavey, named assistant dean for Faculty Mentoring in the College, also serves as principal academic professional in the School of Biological Sciences, director of the Georgia Tech Urban Honey Bee Project, and coordinator of the College’s educational activities related to science and sustainability.

"I look forward to helping faculty connect with others who will help them grow professionally and removing barriers that might be limiting their success,” Leavey shares. “I have benefitted from a number of excellent mentors in my 16 years on campus, and I hope to help others develop similar relationships."

Shepler joins the Dean’s Office as assistant dean for Teaching Effectiveness in the College, also serves as principal academic professional ​focusing primarily on undergraduate program initiatives in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry, where she has directed the first-year chemistry program and other instructional activities.

“I am so excited that the College has chosen to emphasize its educational mission through the creation of this new role,” Shepler says. “I have always identified professionally as a teacher above all else, and it is a privilege to have the opportunity to share that passion on this scale.”

Through their roles as assistant deans, Leavey and Shepler join Laura Cadonati (newly appointed associate dean of Research for the College of Sciences, also effective July 1) in cultivating faculty members to develop and sustain excellence in scholarship and research, as well as creating an environment in which innovation, entrepreneurship, and public service are fundamental characteristics of graduates of the College.

Their collaborative leadership will execute key components of the College’s new strategic plan — focused on catalyzing discovery and solutions, amplifying impact, and building communities of excellence across the workplace, education and training, and research endeavors — to realize our shared mission and vision.

"The Dean’s Office is truly excited to have Jennifer and Carrie joining our team," says Matt Baker, associate dean for Faculty Development in the College. “Their talent, experience, and enthusiasm will allow the College of Sciences to tackle important problems that we’ve never previously had the bandwidth to address.”

Meet Jennifer Leavey

After graduating from Georgia Tech with a bachelor’s in chemistry in 1995, Leavey received her Ph.D. in immunology and molecular pathogenesis at Emory University.  After conducting research fellowships in cellular immunology at the University of Georgia and Emory University, she joined the School of Biology (now the School of Biological Sciences) at Georgia Tech as an academic professional.

She has taken a leading role in the growth of the College of Sciences Explore Living Learning Community, serving as its faculty director. She has also developed innovative vertically-integrated projects (VIPs) including Living Building Science, which is based on the science around the Kendeda Building, and STEMComm, which promotes scientific communication through creative media about recent scientific discoveries and engineering innovations. Leavey has also served as director of the Bee-INSPIRED summer undergraduate research program at Georgia Tech.

Leavey has been recognized through a number of awards, including the Institute's Innovation in Co-curricular Education Award (2014) and the Class of 1940 W. Roane Beard Outstanding Teacher Award (2012). She has also served as principal investigator of multiyear awards to support undergraduate experiential learning from both the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).

Meet Carrie Shepler

Shepler received her bachelor’s in chemistry and communication arts from Georgetown College in Kentucky, and completed her Ph.D. in environmental radiochemistry at Washington State University. Before joining the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry at Georgia Tech, she held instructional roles at Washington State and at the University of Georgia as a Franklin Teaching Post-Doctoral Fellow.

Shepler is the recipient of several awards including the College’s Eric R. Immel Memorial Award for Excellence in Teaching (2016) and the Institute's Class of 1940 W. Roane Beard Outstanding Teacher Award (2011).

"Carrie is widely recognized for her dedication to students and excellence in instruction," says David Collard, senior associate dean in the College of Sciences (CoS). "The creation of the assistant dean position to focus on teaching effectiveness has its origins in the recommendations of a CoS cohort of Provost's Teaching and Learning Fellows a couple of years ago,” he explains. “I can think of no one better than Carrie to lead the development of a robust program of peer-led review of instruction that fosters faculty development."

 

About the College of Sciences

The College of Sciences cultivates curiosity, encourages exploration, and fosters innovation to develop scientific solutions for a better world. Our connected community of scientists and mathematicians collaborates across disciplines and challenges to achieve excellence in science, teaching, and research. Working across six internationally ranked schools with the brightest young minds in our fields, we mentor future leaders to identify and push the frontiers of human knowledge, imagination, and innovation.

We nurture scientifically curious students by offering diverse educational and research experiences. As an internationally recognized, preeminent institution in the sciences and mathematics, we help students build empowering foundations in the sciences and mathematics — educating and preparing the next generation of scientists who will create the technologies of the future.

Most of the disciplines within our six schools — Biological Sciences, Chemistry and Biochemistry, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Mathematics, Physics, and Psychology — are ranked in the top 10%. We organize ourselves in multidisciplinary research neighborhoods to promote broad exchange of ideas. We also offer exciting opportunities for students to engage in research, and train with top professors in chosen fields.

Our internationally recognized senior faculty and an extraordinarily talented group of junior faculty are genuinely concerned about undergraduate and graduate education, and they bring the excitement of new discoveries in the research laboratory to the classroom. The quality of the faculty and the curriculum, combined with new state-of-the-art facilities and a low student to faculty ratio, ensure the excellent educational opportunities available to our students.

About Georgia Tech

The Georgia Institute of Technology, or Georgia Tech, is a top 10 public research university developing leaders who advance technology and improve the human condition.

The Institute offers business, computing, design, engineering, liberal arts, and sciences degrees. Its nearly 40,000 students, representing 50 states and 149 countries, study at the main campus in Atlanta, at campuses in France and China, and through distance and online learning.

As a leading technological university, Georgia Tech is an engine of economic development for Georgia, the Southeast, and the nation, conducting more than $1 billion in research annually for government, industry, and society.

Christina Ragan has been a lecturer of biology and the director of Outreach for Georgia Tech’s B.S. in Neuroscience program since only January of this year. Yet she has already won an award for her teaching because “her contributions to neuroscience education at various stages along her academic journey have been numerous and influential.”

That’s what the international Faculty for Undergraduate Neuroscience (FUN) organization, which supports neuroscience research and education, says in a statement announcing Ragan as the winner of its 2020 Carol Ann Paul Neuroscience Educator of the Year Award. 

“I am so honored and grateful,” Ragan says. “It means so much that my own peers, who are experts in neuroscience education, nominated me for this award. It's been a very tumultuous time, not just for education but for the world, and this recognition is a nice glimmer of sunshine during an otherwise stressful time.”

One of Ragan’s contributions to neuroscience education is highlighted by one of her nominators quoted in the FUN statement: “We first connected in early 2018 through the Teaching Resources for Biological Psychology and Neuroscience Facebook page that Christina founded and continues to actively support. I have found this page to be an incredible resource that allows me and over a thousand members to connect, share, and learn about new and effective teaching techniques.”

Ragan started the Facebook page in 2015 when she was a visiting assistant professor at Colgate University. “I created the group, initially inviting my grad school friends, because there really weren't many avenues for people to get feedback and request activities and assignments for neuroscience courses,” she says. “I wanted tried and true effective assignments and the ability to discuss ideas, so that's how the page was born.” That page now has more than 1,300 members. 

Ragan’s outreach activities include annual Brain Awareness Day and Week activities during the month of March. Brain Awareness is a global campaign designed to foster public enthusiasm and support for brain science, and is coordinated by the Dana Foundation. This year, Ragan organized a virtual interactive session on neuroscience for middle school students.

Ragan’s research interests include determining individual differences in the neurobiology of maternal behavior and anxiety during the postpartum period. “In her classroom, she has integrated her experiences researching maternal anxiety,” says another nominator.

Ragan has also been a research mentor for numerous students, helping many undergraduates in independent neuroscience research projects. Many of these students have received grants for their work, some have co-authored research publications, and many have presented their work at scientific conferences.

The Educator Award is given annually to a regular member or fellow of FUN in recognition of efforts related to promoting effective teaching of neuroscience at the undergraduate level. The award honors the late Carol Ann Paul from Wellesley College, an influential founder of one of the earliest undergraduate neuroscience programs, Ragan says.

“Receiving this award adds to the many awards neuroscience faculty at Georgia Tech have received, and continues to highlight the quality of education that our undergraduate students obtain in the neuroscience program.” 

Ragan will co-host the inaugural Neuroscience Teaching Conference July 22-23, 2021. More information on the virtual conference can be found here.

Two researchers from the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry and three from the School of Biological Sciences have received promotions for their work, support, and service.

Liangjun Zhou and David Gaul, both research scientists II in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry, have been promoted to the position of senior research scientist. 

In the School of Biological Sciences, the following promotions have occurred: 

Bartosz Ilkowski — principal research technologist (formerly senior research technologist)

Kuntal Mukerjee — senior research scientist (formerly research scientist II)

Brandy Olmer — research associate II (formerly research associate)

For Gaul, the promotion comes after spending five years as the leader of the Metabolomics/Lipidomics core in the Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience. In that role, Gaul has taken on a leadership role in the National Institutes of Health’s Molecular Transducers of Physical Activity Consortium, which is examining the impact of that activity at the molecular level in humans and animals. 

During his time with the Consortium, Gaul developed a comprehensive platform that can profile more than 600 lipids (materials in living cells that can include fatty acids, neutral fats, waxes and steroids) in a semi-quantitative fashion.

Gaul is also actively participating in research at the Marcus Center for Therapeutic Cell Characterization, and is collaborating with Georgia Tech and Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta researchers to investigate the effects of traumatic brain injury in children. 

“Gaul has shown incredible leadership in reshaping the small molecule mass spectrometry services at Georgia Tech, bringing us to a position where we are competitive at a national and international level,” says Sue Winters, administrative manager II in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry. 

Liangjun Zhao came to Georgia Tech following Ph.D. studies in enzymology at Wayne State University. M.G. Finn, professor and chair in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry and James A. Carlos Family Chair for Pediatric Technology, says Zhao has been a leading member of the Finn Lab for five years. “In that role, his accomplishments include several outstanding papers on the genetic modification of virus-like particles (VLPs) as robust display platforms for functional molecules and as containers for active enzymes,” Finn says. “He has also created new methods for VLP evolution, and was an important contributor to Georgia Tech’s coronavirus response as a member of the team producing reagents and methods for campus-wide testing.”

Zhao is also a member of the Molecular Evolution Core Facility, responsible for creating and adapting procedures for DNA synthesis and high-throughput DNA sequencing. He has represented Georgia Tech “very well” at a Gordon Research Conference, and as a reviewer for several journals, Finn adds.

“Bartosz (Ilkowski) and I have been colleagues for eighteen years and he still amazes me with his knowledge and innovative ideas relating to anything associated with high performance computing and computing in general, all while being self-taught,” says Jessica Forness, center manager of the Center for the Study of Systems Biology. “Whether it’s water-chilled doors, optimizing computer time, density and cooling, or just helping me fix the printer, he always has an innovative solution.” 

“Kuntal Mukherjee is a dedicated scientist and a good friend,” says lab manager Gary Newman. “He works hard on his research and is always able to help his coworkers. All of Kuntal’s outstanding work is the direct result of his unique perspective and immense dedication.”

Frances Diggle, a research scientist in the lab of Marvin Whiteley, shares that Brandy Olmer works remotely from Texas, supporting the Whiteley, Steve Diggle and Sam Brown labs in the Center for Microbial Dynamics and Infection. Olmer assists with administrative systems, along with submitting grants, tracking funding, hiring, and organizing marketing events. “She is incredibly knowledgeable and a pleasure to work with," notes Frances Diggle. "She’s always willing to help and find ways to make things happen." Olmer also was responsible for coordinating the "This Week in Microbiology" (TWiM) podcast recording on campus in October 2019.

“The work of research faculty is critical to the school’s mission to fuel scientific discovery,” adds Todd Streelman, professor and chair of the School of Biological Sciences. “We’re very proud of our candidates promoted this year.”

Two charitable foundations have announced their support of research at the Georgia Institute of Technology that could change the basic understanding of DNA, potentially leading to new treatments for degenerative diseases.

The W.M. Keck Foundation and the G. Harold and Leila Y. Mathers Foundation have awarded grants of $1 million and $300,000, respectively, to boost the research of Francesca Storici, professor in the School of Biological Sciences and principal investigator for the projects. Both grants are directed toward decrypting the hidden message of ribonucleotide incorporation in human nuclear DNA.

“We have a lot to learn about the role ribonucleotides play in the structure and function of human DNA,” said Storici, also a researcher with the Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience at Georgia Tech, whose lab already has contributed much to what the world knows about ribonucleotides, or rNMPs – the basic building blocks of RNA – when they are embedded in DNA.

Storici and her collaborators have developed new tools and techniques to find and characterize rNMPs in DNA. Their studies of yeast DNA suggest that rNMPs aren’t just random “noise,” as had been previously alleged, but rather offer a code – Storici and her colleagues call it “cryptic language,” capable of regulating DNA functions.

The grants will help researchers begin to translate that cryptic language.

 “These ribonucleotides may represent novel biomarkers for human diseases such as cancer and other degenerative disorders,” Storici said.

Mistaken Replication

For an organism to grow, its cells must divide. For a cell to divide, its DNA must replicate. In humans, nearly 2 trillion cells divide every day. DNA polymerases, enzymes that facilitate DNA replication, mis-incorporate – or incorporate – rNMPs. These embedded rNMPs are known for changing the character of DNA and posing a threat to genomic stability.

Storici’s lab developed and tested a technique called ribose-seq that let them determine the whole profile of rNMPs incorporated into yeast DNA. Using ribose-seq, they discovered hot spots and patterns where rNMP insertions accumulate – accumulations that were assumed to be random noise.

Based on their recent findings, the researchers hypothesize that some rNMPs form specific motifs, or cryptic words, in human DNA, comprising previously hidden signals for specific metabolic functions of DNA, such as gene expression and replication.

“We don’t think this cryptic language of ribonucleotides is random. So, our goal is to decode the cryptic language,” Storici said. “Currently, we know nothing about that. There may be a particular sequence, or patterns of regularity that we can identify.”

Using ribose-seq to map rNMPs in DNA, via next-generation sequencing, and a computational toolkit they developed called Ribose-Map, the Storici team will build libraries of rNMP sites from a number of human cell types.

Through bioinformatic analyses and computational methods, they intend to identify and decipher the cryptic words of rNMP incorporation, “setting the stage to discover rNMPs’ role,” Storici said.

The foundations are both supporting the same scope of work, but at different scales, and the researchers will work with different human cell lines for each grant.

The Mathers Foundation will cover work with the Storici lab only. The Keck Foundation is supporting a collaborative effort between Storici and Natasha Jonoska, professor of mathematics at the University of South Florida. Both Storici and Jonoska are founding members of the Southeast Center for Mathematics and Biology.

“Through the combination of our molecular biology tools at Georgia Tech, with Natasha’s mathematical expertise in modeling and data analysis, there is great potential here for a big breakthrough – for developing a greater understanding of the biology of the human genome,” Storici said.

***

About The G. Harold and Leila Y. Mathers Foundation

The mission of The G. Harold and Leila Y. Mathers Foundation is to advance knowledge in the life sciences by sponsoring scientific research that will benefit humankind. Basic scientific research, with potential translational application, is central to this goal. Since commencing grantmaking activities in 1982, the Mathers Foundation has granted more than $350 million. For many years, the foundation has enjoyed special recognition in the research community in supporting basic scientific research, realizing that true transformative breakthroughs usually occur after a thorough understanding of the fundamental mechanisms underlying natural phenomena. More recently, and with the advent of newer investigative methodologies, technology, and tools, the foundation now embraces innovative translational research proposals.

About the W.M. Keck Foundation

The W.M. Keck Foundation was established in 1954 in Los Angeles by William Myron Keck, founder of The Superior Oil Company. One of the nation’s largest philanthropic organizations, the W.M. Keck Foundation supports outstanding science, engineering, and medical research. The foundation also supports undergraduate education and maintains a program within Southern California to support arts and culture, education, health, and community service projects.

About the Georgia Institute of Technology

The Georgia Institute of Technology, or Georgia Tech, is a top 10 public research university developing leaders who advance technology and improve the human condition.

The Institute offers business, computing, design, engineering, liberal arts, and sciences degrees. Its nearly 40,000 students, representing 50 states and 149 countries, study at the main campus in Atlanta, at campuses in France and China, and through distance and online learning. 

As a leading technological university, Georgia Tech is an engine of economic development for Georgia, the Southeast, and the nation, conducting more than $1 billion in research annually for government, industry, and society.

 

In a fiscal year indelibly marked by the pandemic, College of Sciences researchers and students maintained high research standards despite the obstacles and restrictions of Covid-19. The result was a high rate of research study submissions during FY21 (July 1, 2020 to June 30, 2021) at Georgia Tech — with some significant funding wins for the College of Sciences. 

“Students used their creativity to imagine new experiments, data analyses, and modeling studies that were feasible despite our facilities being shut down fully last spring and partially throughout summer, fall, winter, and spring of 2021,” says Julia Kubanek, vice president for Interdisciplinary Research (VPIR) at Georgia Tech. “Because of the safety and effectiveness of Covid-19 vaccines, we are now in a position to return more fully to lab- and field-based research. It’s energizing to once again learn from each other in collaborative research settings and to meet in person to discuss results and plan new projects.”

Kubanek, a professor in the School of Biological Sciences and the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry, who served as associate dean of Research for the College of Sciences until assuming her new role as VPIR on July 1, 2021, says Georgia Tech faculty have been “heroic” in juggling remote and hybrid teaching, and remote student mentorship, while protecting health and safety in their labs. “Each faculty-led team of trainees and researchers has had to decide what works for their own projects, deferring some collaborative field and lab experiments that were unsafe during the year because we couldn’t work shoulder-to-shoulder,” she says. Faculty remained in close contact with sponsors like the National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health, which made accommodations for project timelines and experimental design.

Faculty and students were also involved in quick pivots of their research so they could study the pandemic. Research teams launched entirely new initiatives focusing on pandemic response, vaccine development, antiviral drug discovery, Covid-19-related testing, and modeling of disease transmission.

“Students and postdoctoral researchers in the College of Sciences got to play critical roles in these projects, which brought new meaning to us regarding Georgia Tech’s mission to improve the human condition,” Kubanek says. 

Here are some major research funding grants approved for the schools during FY21 in the College of Sciences, along with coordinating principal investigators and funding sources: 

Modeling SARS-CoV-2, Interventions, and Impacts on Healthcare Resources (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services)
Joshua Weitz, Patton Distinguished Chair in the School of Biological Sciences and co-director of the Interdisciplinary Ph.D. in Quantitative Biosciences, is a key researcher in Georgia Tech’s response to the novel coronavirus. Weitz co-led development of a modeling tool early in the pandemic for estimating risk to those attending events of various sizes in all U.S. counties. 

Exploring a Reservoir Within a Greenland Glacier, and Plumbing the Uncertainties of Sea Level Rise (Heising-Simons Foundation)
Winnie Chu, an assistant professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, is studying the Helheim Glacier, which could lead to more clues about climate change’s impact on losses to Greenland’s ice mass.

Neha Garg Receives NSF CAREER Award to Fight Coral Reef Disease (NSF)
Garg, an assistant professor in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry, has won an NSF CAREER award to study Stony Coral Tissue Loss Disease, which has already infected more than 20 species of corals off Florida’s coast.

Topology Between Dimensions Three and Four (NSF)
Led by Jennifer Hom, associate professor in the School of Mathematics

Program of Research on Multimodal Human-Machine Interfaces (Toyota Corp)
Led by Bruce Walker, professor in the School of Psychology and School of Interactive Computing

The Challenge of Predicting Rainfall in a Changing Climate (NSF)
Jie He, assistant professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, has received an NSF CAREER award to unlock the uncertainty in rainfall predictions.

Giant Polymer Brushes: How Fluid-Like Hyaluronan Brushes Minimize Biofilms Adhesion (NSF)
Led by Jennifer Curtis, associate professor in the School of Physics

Characterization and Recovery of Critical Metals from Municipal Solid Waste (U.S. Department of Energy)
Led by Yuanzhi Tang, associate professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences

GLACIOME: Developing a Comprehensive Model of the Coupled Glacier-Ocean-Melange System (NSF)
Led by Alex Robel, assistant professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences; learn more about Robel's recent research here.

Reposition and Optimization of Deferiprone for Breast Center Therapy (NSF)
Led by Adegboyega "Yomi" Oyelere, associate professor in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry, and Yuhong Fan, associate professor in the School of Biological Sciences and Georgia Research Alliance Distinguished Scholar

Breaking the Chain: Disrupting Guinea Worm Disease Transmission (The Carter Center)
Led by Jeannette Yen, professor in the School of Biological Sciences

The Georgia Tech Alumni Association has released its annual list of young graduates working to change our world, with six College of Sciences alumni from three schools among those honored in the 2021 class of the Tech’s 40 Under 40.

The program, launched last year, seeks to recognize and celebrate Georgia Tech alumni under the age of 40 who have innovated industries and positively impacted communities across the globe.

As the Alumni Association notes, “Georgia Tech’s impact reaches every industry, every part of the globe, and every aspect of people’s lives through the work of our esteemed alumni. These 40 talented individuals have made significant contributions in their fields at an early age. From saving endangered coral reefs in the Caribbean to building a space station near the Moon to paving the way for Black-owned businesses to thrive in Atlanta, these individuals are changing the world for the better.”

Nominees must have completed at least one semester at Georgia Tech, be under the age of 40 as of June 30, 2021, and have made an impact in their profession or community, spanning all industries and sectors. A committee of 21 faculty, staff, and volunteer leaders, who collectively represented all Georgia Tech colleges, scored each nominee using a 25-point rubric.

Profiles on each member of this year’s cohort will be printed in the fall issue of the Alumni magazine, set for mid-October mailing.

Until then, you can learn about the 2021 class on the Alumni Association’s website, and read on to meet the six inspiring College of Sciences alumni recognized in this year’s class:

Arindam Basu, MS Math 09, PhD ECE 10
Associate Professor | City U

Basu’s work in implantable machine learning for brain-machine interfaces (BMI) offers hope to the nearly 5.4 million persons living with paralysis. While the technology is still nascent, Basu’s research group at City University of Hong Kong and Nanyang Technological University in Singapore works on different aspects of neuromorphic circuits and systems that can be applied to brain-machine interfaces and Internet of Things (IoT). He helped pioneer the concept of integrating machine learning to BMI implants to reduce wireless data transmission rates, and thus, reduce the risk of infection that can be caused by needing to implant wires. Recently, his team has developed sensors that can mimic human pain receptors that can learn from harmful stimuli to trigger a pain withdrawal reflex even when the sensor is damaged.

Advice for new Yellow Jackets: “Do not be afraid to explore new grounds—Tech is a melting pot of talented faculty and students, so you should try to maximize your learning experience in all possible ways. Most importantly, do not stick to the boundaries of your discipline—the most amazing discoveries and inventions await you the moment you can make connections between concepts across disciplines.” – Basu

Fun fact: Basu—always the curious researcher—wanted to figure out how humans learn to smile when we are happy. He tried an experiment on his baby by correlating happy moments with a frown instead…but had to stop after his wife said she’d ban him from being with his daughter!

James Belanger, EAS  07, PhD EAS 12 
Senior Meteorological Scientist | The Weather Company, IBM

When it comes to extreme weather events, having accurate forecasts is a matter of life or death. As an atmospheric scientist, Belanger’s work has influenced the type and quality of weather and climate forecast information consumed by millions of people around the world. After graduating in 2012, he joined a Tech VentureLab startup to implement his research on improving probabilistic tropical cyclone forecasts using numerical weather prediction models and machine learning. That research has been applied worldwide and continues to be used today to support more effective emergency management decisions. For the last five years, he’s served as senior scientist with The Weather Company, an IBM business and the largest provider of weather forecasts worldwide.

“My education experience was challenging and global in nature, taking me to study abroad programs in France and conferences across Europe and India, and opening my aperture to both the suffering and the opportunity that lies ahead,” Belanger says.

Fun fact: Belanger is married to Laura Belanger, also a Tech graduate, and she works at the U.S. National Weather Service in Atlanta. The couple has named their children after meteorological events that changed U.S. history. Their son, Andrew, can be traced to Hurricane Andrew in 1992, and their daughter, Katherine, to Hurricane Katrina from 2005.

Kristen Marhaver, Bio 04 
Associate Scientist | CARMABI Foundation

Marhaver is a scuba diver, underwater photographer, and a world-renowned expert in coral breeding. In her research lab in Curaçao, she invented new methods for coral breeding, baby coral propagation, and coral gene banking to help scientists and reef restoration teams around the world. Her TED talks sharing her methods and innovations have garnered over 2 million views. She worked as an undergraduate researcher in Georgia Tech’s School of Biology for several years, including multiple years studying corals, coral ecology, and coral reef fishes with Drs. Snell, Jones, and Hay. After graduating, she landed a competitive PhD position at Scripps. Since then, her work has been featured by the Smithsonian, The Atlantic, Scientific American, and TED. Marhaver was the first person in the world to raise baby pillar corals, a nearly extinct Caribbean coral species that is listed as endangered.

This required diving for hours in the dark over multiple years to decode the timing and carefully collect eggs and sperm to achieve fertilization using specialized methods. Three other teams have now successfully bred juvenile pillar corals with her methods. In addition, Marhaver, her father, Carl Marhaver, and her stepmother, Robin Ferst Marhaver, have sponsored a first-year biology researcher each year in the FastTrack Research Program.

“Georgia Tech gave me rocket boosters for my career. As a scientist, I lean on my GT training every single day,” Marhaver says.

Fun fact: Marhaver used to run the 100-meter hurdles.

Melissa Nord,  EAS  13  
Meteorologist | 11 Alive

In December 2020, Nord became 11 Alive’s weekend morning meteorologist in Atlanta. Previously, she was a meteorologist and co-anchor at WUSA 9 for several years. Nord’s ability to forecast and present the weather in a relatable yet stimulating way has earned her national recognition. She won the 2018 Associated Press and Emmy Award for Best Meteorologist/Weather Anchor in the Washington D.C. and Chesapeake Bay region, excelling above veterans in the field. Her mission is to change how people consume weather forecasts by bringing the science to life in a relatable format. Nord is also a passionate STEM advocate, volunteering with community organizations to bring STEM activities to children.

“Georgia Tech allowed me to ‘embrace the nerd’—and I follow this motto in my career, being nicknamed ‘Nord the Nerd’,” she says.

Fun fact: Nord has a German Shepherd-Lab mix named Buzz! On social media @MelissaNordWx, you can see photos of Buzz, her cat Emma, and “Weather Baby,” a future Yellow Jacket that she and her husband (also a Tech grad) welcomed into the world last fall.

Michole Washington, AM 16
Mathematics Education Doctoral Candidate | University of Michigan

Washington’s “abolitionist approach” to STEM education started the year she graduated from Georgia Tech. In 2016, she was the ninth Black woman in history to earn a bachelor’s in Applied Mathematics from the Institute. That fact signaled to her that there were deeply rooted, systemic issues in the education system, including racism, sexism, and imperialism; this makes it hard for Black and Brown students to feel seen, challenged, or excited about learning STEM concepts. She’s committed to shifting the narrative of what STEM education is and who can do it. As a doctoral candidate in mathematics education at the University of Michigan, she studies different aspects of informal STEM environments like extracurriculars designed for students who are underestimated because of their race or economic status. As a resident researcher intern at NASA, she conducts research and develops tools focused on evidence-based, effective practices aimed at sparking and sustaining underestimated K-12 girls’ interest in STEM. She is also CEO and founder of STEMulation, an educational games and media production company that promotes STEM learning through the lens of social justice theory and practice.

“Even though most of my current success is about critiquing mathematics education and the culture around it, my formal mathematics training at GT has set a sturdy foundation for my messaging,” Washington says. “By that, I mean my undergraduate experiences as a math major at GT gave me a first-hand perspective to understand when a student is not comfortable within a STEM space, and secondly, the motivation to want to do something about it.”

Fun fact: Washington has an Amtrak rewards card because she loves riding cross-country trains.

Thomas “Bo” Hatchett, Bio 13
Georgia State Senator – District 50 | Georgia State Senate

Hatchett was elected to the Georgia State Senate in 2020, becoming the youngest state senator in Georgia. He represents District 50, which includes eight counties in the northeastern corner of Georgia. Hatchett also serves as the governor’s floor leader. Since passing the bar in 2017, Hatchett, a civil trial attorney with Cathy & Strain, LLC, has worked on a number of catastrophic injury cases seeking justice for families. While at Georgia Tech, Hatchett served as captain of the school’s swim team during his last two years. As a litigator, representative, and real-estate business owner, Hatchett strives to always live by the Institute’s motto of “Progress and Service.”

“My education extended way beyond the classroom, and the professors, coaches, and staff members at Georgia Tech helped mold me into the person I am today,” Hatchett says.

Fun fact: Hatchett is a huge fan of the show Jeopardy. When he was younger, he would watch the show with his dad, and when he got to Tech, he and his roommates rarely missed an episode.

 

First photo: Left to right, top row then lower: Arindam Basu (MS Math 09, PhD ECE 10), James Belanger (EAS 07, PhD EAS 12), Kristen Marhaver (Bio 04), Melissa Nord (EAS 13), Michole Washington (AM 16), and Thomas “Bo” Hatchett (Bio 13).

For almost a year and a half, the pandemic has affected how most people work, play, and generally conduct their lives. Now people are emerging from their social bubbles, re-engaging with colleagues, and, very likely, trying to increase their happiness during a period of prolonged stress.   

Eric Schumacher, professor in the School of Psychology, taught a course this summer on stress and happiness. In his class he discusses how students can learn better study habits, learn to overcome disappointment, and improve their general well-being. They also learn about the science of the stress response, what it’s good for, and the negative effects of chronic stress.

He teaches that, with intentional practice, people can improve their happiness level regardless of the circumstances and their individual predisposition.

“In this course, especially given what has happened over the last year, I was interested in discussing the science behind the physiological stress system and then what can we do beyond that to increase our happiness,” he said. “We can work to reduce our stressors, and then can we do more to improve our happiness.” The course is not a substitute for seeing a therapist or taking prescribed medication. 

“We often think that happiness is largely determined by external forces,” he said. “Some of us might be stressed about how to pay the rent or mortgage this month or how to pay for school or a trip. So people think, ‘If I just had more money I would be happier.’ But the research shows that for most people who end up with a change in their financial status, it produces only a short-term increase in their level of happiness.”

Schumacher said there are techniques to help adjust how you frame the way you think about stress. That’s why Madeline Berns, a third-year neuroscience major, took the class.

“I’ve struggled with depression and anxiety for a long time and thought the class could teach me new outlooks and skills for handling stress,” Berns said. “I learned that stress is a very physical problem. Even when it’s not a life-or-death situation, your body is acting like it is; it’s trying to protect you via fight, flight, or freeze. So, stress is the body trying to help you out, and sometimes you can trick it into calming down through physical activity.”

Berns believes the class was particularly meaningful in teaching long-lasting strategies for viewing and treating stress.

“It didn’t just focus on one happiness-inducing activity,” she said. “Instead, it actually taught us meaningful activities like paced breathing, forgiveness prompts, mindfulness and meditation, and others that we can use over and over again, often with little to no effort at all — but a large payoff.”

Shaping the shared future of microbes and human health is the mission for Georgia Tech’s Center for Microbial Dynamics and Infection (CMDI).

Yes, there are similar academic-based centers studying infectious diseases and the microbes that cause them, but to understand what makes Georgia Tech’s center different, Sam Brown, CMDI co-director and a professor in the School of Biological Sciences, says to concentrate on that third letter in the Center's name.

“Focus on dynamics,” says Brown. “That’s basically how microbes are changing over time and space as well as how they’re changing systems in time. This notion of dynamics operates on different scales. It operates, as I see it, on a behavioral scale — individual bugs making decisions and changing their behavior in time.”

Ecological dynamics are “how populations are changing with time, and how they’re interacting with other communities — for example in biofilms,” Brown adds, referring to the name for communities of microorganisms that stick to surfaces and create their own “neighborhoods.”

There are also evolutionary dynamics, which are worrying to Brown and other researchers, as they can mean bacteria increase resistance to antibiotics. And then there are epidemiological dynamics.

“We’re all glued to our screens watching the epidemiological dynamics of Covid-19 play out in real time,” he explains.

All of this involves the study of some of the natural world’s tiniest troublemakers — and helpers. Humans are pathetically outnumbered by microbes. They live in, on, and around all of us. They are at both ends of the human food chain, helping farmers grow food, and then assisting us in digesting our meals.

“You have trillions of bacteria in your gut,” points out Marvin Whiteley, CMDI’s founding co-director who serves as a professor in the School of Biological Sciences, Georgia Tech Bennie H. and Nelson D. Abell Chair in Molecular and Cellular Biology, Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar and co-director for Emory-Children’s CF Center. So, in the spectrum of these tiny communities, there are helpful and harmful microbes alike — and the latter can often make us very sick. That’s where CMDI experts step in.

“CMDI is working to transform how we study microbes in an environmental context, and ultimately find new microbial strategies to improve human and environmental health,” Brown says.

CMDI’s science is conducted in an interdisciplinary manner, like many other research centers at Georgia Tech, with research that reaches into a number of other disciplines — microbial ecology, microbiome dynamics, biogeochemistry, microbial biophysics, socio-microbiology, infection dynamics, host-pathogen interactions, marine and aquatic microbiology, microbial evolution, viral ecology, spatial imaging, and math/computational modeling.

The Center is fairly new, beginning operations in 2018. Yet it’s already closing in on 100 researchers — faculty, graduate students, and postdoctoral students — and is aggressively recruiting early career scientists from around the world to research at CMDI.

“We are a unique interdisciplinary research center since our expertise spans such broad subjects from coral reef ecosystems, to antibiotic resistant bacteria, to new infectious diseases therapies,” explains Maria Avdonina, CMDI manager. 

Building CMDI’s foundation, and using it to attack P. aeruginosa

“How does a pathogen do what it does at the molecular level?” Marvin Whiteley asks.

It is a question that he began asking at The University of Texas at Austin, where he founded another center to study infectious disease before coming to Georgia Tech in 2017. Back then, Whiteley was looking for the kind of interdisciplinary mix of researchers that can be found widely across the Institute, so he moved to Atlanta and built that into the CMDI’s mission as its founding co-director.

“It’s the idea of not just working with pure microbiologists, but working with those interested in how things change, and their dynamic aspects, even daily changes in the microbiome,” he says, referring to the term used to describe all the microorganisms that live in a particular environment, whether it’s a human body or a body of land or water. “It requires modelers — people used to looking at big data sets — and people who think about evolutionary biology. It’s a unique kind of expertise that I don’t have in my lab, but the folks who work for me in the lab can take advantage of it within CMDI.”

Whiteley’s research interests include the study of cystic fibrosis (CF), a genetic disease that results in bacteria chronically attacking the lungs of its patients. To combat disease, Whiteley is focusing research on Pseudomonas aeruginosa (P. aeruginosa), a particularly dangerous bacteria that’s often found in CF patients’ lungs. He notes that the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) lists it as one of the primary pathogens that is cause for clinical concern.

“It lives in nature, but we published a paper showing it’s not everywhere. It’s located near human activity, so wherever we are, it seems to grow and do really well. It’s in a lot of different diseases — and CF is one of them.”

P. aeruginosa is also “a really important cause of wound infections,” Whiteley adds, citing a CDC estimate that by 2050, about 20 percent of the entire U.S. healthcare budget could be spent treating chronic wound infections.

“The biggest problem in environments where it’s problematic is hospitals,” he says. “It’s very tolerant of antimicrobials, and it acquires resistance fairly quickly. That causes it to enrich in its environment.”

Taking on Covid-19

Joshua Weitz, who is a CMDI faculty member, professor and Tom and Marie Patton Chair in Biological Sciences, and founding director of the Interdisciplinary Ph.D. in Quantitative Biosciences program, is a key scientist behind Georgia Tech’s Covid-19 surveillance testing efforts, along with Covid-19 event risk and population immunity modeling research around nation and beyond.

Weitz has led a series of concurrent efforts to estimate epidemiological characteristics of SARS-CoV-2, develop novel approaches to use large-scale testing as an intervention, and leverage mathematical models and real-time datasets to inform the public of ongoing transmission risk.   

Weitz recently received a best paper award from the Georgia Tech Chapter of Sigma Xi for his work on the Covid-19 Event Risk Assessment Planning Tool, which calculates the odds of being exposed to an infected individual in groups of different sizes; it has received more than 8 million unique visitors who have generated more than 40 million risk estimates since the planning tool’s launch in July 2020.

Weitz also joined fellow faculty and staff in sharing an Institute Research Award and Institute Service Award in recognition of collective efforts to design, develop, implement, deploy an asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 saliva-based testing program to address the coronavirus pandemic across campus. “We’re very proud of what Joshua has done,” Sam Brown says, “both in the context of Covid-19 and also in exploring new therapeutic angles for bacterial infections, by harnessing the viral natural enemies of bacteria: phages.”

The search for new antibiotics — and how best to use them

While Covid-19 is a virus that has dominated headlines since early 2020, bacterial resistance to antibiotics has been a problem for decades. Penicillin was first available as an antibiotic in 1941. Staphylococcus aureus was found to be resistant to it as early as 1942.

CMDI faculty member Julia Kubanek, a professor of in the School of Biological Sciences and School of Chemistry and Biochemistry, former associate dean for Research in the College of Sciences and newly appointed vice president for Interdisciplinary Research (VPIR) for all of Georgia Tech, has spent the past 17 years diving into the waters near Fiji and the Solomon Islands, looking for natural marine products that could fill that widening gap in resistance-free drugs.

“It’s been a long time since entirely new classes of antibiotics were brought to market,” Kubanek explains. “Pharmaceutical companies have reduced their investments in antibiotic drug discovery, despite the continuing rise of antimicrobial resistance among existing drugs. More resistant strains of infectious bacteria and fungi are evolving constantly and present severe threats to public health.”

The Covid-19 pandemic is a related example. It has revealed that science’s arsenal of antiviral drugs is inadequate, she notes.

Kubanek and CMDI faculty colleague Mark Hay, Regents Professor and Harry and Linda Teasley Chair in the School of Biological Sciences, are both part of Georgia Tech’s drug discovery program, which looks at small molecule natural products from marine organisms as sources for potential future medicines against infectious diseases.

A partnership with Emory University School of Medicine helps researchers screen Georgia Tech’s natural product library — what Kubanek and her research team found on those South Pacific trips — for potential drug candidates has resulted in encouraging news for viruses like SARS-CoV-2, the specific coronavirus that causes Covid-19.

“We’re currently following three promising classes of natural products from marine algae and sponges that show preliminary activity against this coronavirus,” Kubanek says. Those molecules are distinct from currently marketed antivirals and antibiotics, and that could mean more weapons in science’s arsenal for fighting infectious diseases.

CMDI researchers also approach the antibiotic resistance crisis through an epidemiological and evolutionary lens. For example, recent work from the Brown Lab has identified new strategies to slow or even reverse the increase in drug-resistant strains, by changing how doctors dose their drugs, and how they make use of diagnostic information.  

Microbes, climate, and environmental health 

Beyond human infections and pathogen control, CMDI also focuses on the significant impacts that microbes have on human and environmental health. CMDI faculty member Joel Kostka, professor and associate chair of Research in the School of Biological Sciences who also serves as a professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, is a leading researcher in environmental microbiology, bringing the power of “omics” technologies to discover the role of environmental microbes in shaping key aspects of our shared world, from bioremediation to climate change. 

Kostka’s work led to the discovery of key marine microbes that played an important role in cleaning up the oil spilled during the 2010 Deepwater Horizon Disaster — microbes that turned out to be abundant in oil-contaminated soils around the world. 

Kostka’s work in this space “revealed a natural capacity for rare microbes in the Gulf of Mexico to catalyze the bioremediation, or natural cleanup, of petroleum hydrocarbons,” he explains. “These microbes show promise as biological indicators to direct emergency response efforts, as well as to elucidate the impacts of oil exposure on ecosystem health during oil spills and other environmental disasters,” he adds. 

The Kostka Lab has also long characterized the role of the environment in shaping microbial communities that limit the release of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere.  

In a large scale climate change experiment that’s being conducted in northern Minnesota with funding by the U.S. Department of Energy, Kostka’s research recently showed that warming accelerates the production of greenhouse gases from soil microbial respiration — and that microbial activity “was fueled by the release of plant metabolites, suggesting that enhanced greenhouse gas production is likely to persist and result in amplified climate feedbacks.”  

“Joel is our key player in this space,” Brown says. “He’s done incredible research on how the environment can dictate microbial species abundance and their behavioral contributions to the functioning of Earth’s ecosystems. He’s shown that different ‘taxa’, or groups of organisms, become metabolically active or ‘switched on’ depending on environmental factors like temperature. His research contributes to building better climate models as well as to develop new geoengineering strategies to adapt to climate change. He’s doing beautiful work.”

CMDI’s global call to early career microbiologists

CMDI’s research is funded by grants from agencies like the National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health to individual labs run by faculty — and by money distributed directly to the Center from across Georgia Tech, including the College of Sciences and its Office of the Dean and Sutherland Dean's Chair.

These sources “are getting healthier by the minute, and that’s a testament to the scientists at the Center,” Brown points out — so much so that two new positions have recently been created: a senior research scientist who will assist postdoctoral and graduate students with grant and fellowship applications, and a CMDI Early Career Award Fellowship that seeks out “superstars, people who are going to go on to be faculty success stories.”

“We want to get them early,” Brown says. “We’re interviewing some great candidates just out of their Ph.D.s. We’ll give them maximum independence, their own space, their own office, their own pot of money. They’ll be sitting at the intersection of our research interests but can run their own lab and their own research program.”

This allows postdoctoral students to focus on research projects, Julia Kubanek says. “Because postdocs generally don’t enroll in formal courses, nor are they generally expected to teach in the classroom, they get to immerse themselves in research in collaboration with faculty, students, and other postdocs. The CMDI is rapidly growing as a collaborative environment, where postdocs can try out their best ideas and learn from others how to tackle the most pressing scientific questions in microbial dynamics, microbial communication, ecosystem health, and infectious disease.” Kubanek adds that a related fellowship program “will augment postdoctoral salaries to attract the very best candidates, enabling grant dollars to stretch further, leading to new discoveries.”

The Center is also ratcheting up outreach, including what it calls its "Research Envoys Program." The intitiative features graduate students giving seminars at local institutions throughout the Atlanta area, including at historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs). Although it’s mostly on pause right now due to the pandemic, two Ph.D. students and a postdoctoral student working with CMDI faculty member Brian Hammer — a professor in the School of Biological Sciences who is also chair of the Institute Undergraduate Curriculum Committee, and co-director of the Aquatic Chemical Ecology Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program — recently gave remote seminars at Spelman College and Kennesaw State University.

“Our trainees get practice in speaking, and it opens doors to folks seeing Georgia Tech as an option,” Brown explains. The CMDI is also working with Georgia Tech’s Institute Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion and the Southern Regional Education Board to continue to increase the number of underrepresented minorities at all levels of recruitment.

“We’re really interested in educating the next generation of scientists in biology,” Whiteley adds. “Everybody says that — but we’re actually developing programs to recruit the best talent in the world.”

 

CMDI research areas and faculty:

Sam Brown

Virulence, microbiomes, biofilms, cystic fibrosis

Steve Diggle

Biofilms, virulence

Neha Garg

Cystic fibrosis, coral reef microbial disease

Brian Hammer

Vibrio cholerae (cholera), microbial interactions

Mark Hay

Marine ecology/coral reefs

Joel Kostka

Environmental microbiology, biogeochemistry, microbiomes, wetlands, bioremediation

Julia Kubanek

Natural product drug discovery, marine chemical ecology

William Ratcliff

Multicellular evolution, biofilm dynamics

Frank Rosenzweig

Cellular genomics and evolution

Peter Yunker

Soft matter physics, biofilms, multicellular evolution

Joshua Weitz

Viruses/viral modeling, bacteriophages, microbial ecology/evolution

Marvin Whiteley

Microbial ecology/virulence, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, cystic fibrosis

Learn more about each faculty member’s area of research on the CMDI website.

 

Writer: Renay San Miguel

Editors and Contributors: Jess Hunt-Ralston, Joel Kostka, Joshua Weitz, Julia Kubanek, Maria Avdonina, Marvin Whiteley, Sam Brown

Vibrio cholerae, the pathogenic bacterium that causes cholera, has killed millions worldwide, and is still found in countries where infrastructure doesn’t support clean water. Cholera patients can suffer from severe vomiting and diarrhea, which can lead to fatal dehydration.

One factor V. cholerae uses to cause disease is a toxin-loaded “nano-harpoon,” in the words of Brian Hammer, associate professor in the School of Biological Sciences. “Many pathogenic bacteria, including V. cholerae, are successful in the environment and human body because they compete for food and space by lancing their neighbors with that harpoon. The harpoon’s toxic ‘contact-antibiotics’ kill bacteria from the inside. Thwarting human pathogens will require an understanding of these arsenals.”

Now, Hammer is on a team of scientists from Georgia Tech who have found a previously unknown weapon in the arsenal of cholera bacteria: a toxin that impairs a cell’s membrane and looks like none described prior — hence the title of the team’s research study: “A New Contact Killing Toxin Permeabilizes Cells and Belongs to a Broadly Distributed Protein Family,” published July 21 in mSphere, part of the American Society of Microbiology Journals.

Team members include Hammer (the study’s corresponding author), his graduate student Christian Crisan (the study’s lead author), and undergraduate researcher Catherine Everly; along with assistant professor Peter Yunker and his postdoctoral student Gabi Steinbach of the School of Physics; and professor Raquel Lieberman and her postdoctoral student Shannon Hill in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry. Hammer and Yunker are members of Georgia Tech’s Center for Microbial Dynamics and Infection; and Hammer, Lieberman, and Yunker are also members of the Parker H. Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience. 

The technical term for V. cholerae’s “nano-harpoon” is a Type 6 Secretion System, (T6SS). “While many microbiologists have focused their efforts on a few toxins made by V. cholerae obtained from patients, we sequenced the DNA of Vibrios from non-human environmental sources and developed computational tools to find new contact-antibiotic toxin genes,” Hammer says of his lab’s work. “In doing so, my student Cristian Crisan, who just defended his Ph.D., discovered a new T6 toxin that doesn't look like any other protein characterized prior. He showed this toxin” — which the team named TpeV (type VI permeabilizing effector Vibrio) — “kills competitors by altering their cell membranes.” Doing so results in cell damage or death.

Hunting through a database, Crisan also discovered that hundreds of other bacteria, including pathogens like Salmonella and Proteus, also carry this novel toxin. “Our current work is studying exactly how this contact-antibiotic works, and ways that bacteria can adapt to become resistant to it and other T6 toxins,” Hammer says. 

Cholera remains a well-studied disease since it touches many disciplines including microbiology, epidemiology, aquatic ecology, and water resource management, Hammer says. Outbreaks still occur in places such as Bangladesh, Yemen, and Haiti.

Learning more about V. cholerae’s toxins, and their antimicrobial abilities, could mean more effective ways to deal with antibiotic resistance, now an area of concern for microbiologists. 

“We demonstrate that TpeV has antimicrobial activity by permeabilizing cells, eliminating membrane potentials, and causing severe cytotoxicity,” the team writes in its study. “We propose that TpeV-like toxins contribute to the fitness of many bacteria. Finally, since antibiotic resistance is a critical global health threat, the discovery of new antimicrobial mechanisms could lead to the development of new treatments against resistant strains.”

The School of Biological Sciences, the National Science Foundation, the U.S.-Israel Binational Science Foundation, and the German National Academy of Natural Sciences Leopoldina contributed to this research study.